Job 21:34 How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood
When I was a little kid, we went to Disney World and to the Haunted Mansion. Now, I’m not advocating Disney World or the Haunted Mansion. I’m just tell you what happened. So, as I recall there is a waiting room in the Haunted Mansion where you see all these Victorian portraits of people, like a lady with a parasol and a man drinking tea. Then somehow the wall moves and the portraits all begin to elongate. You suddenly see that the man drinking tea is actually standing on the jaws of an alligator and the lady with the parasol is walking across a canyon on a rickety bridge. It is kind of humorous. You see these people who look fine, but when you see the whole picture, you realize there is a bigger picture. They are in great danger.
One of the challenges of life is seeing things in their full context. We may think we know the context of a person’s actions, but the truth is that we don’t have the big picture. The first time I went to Yosemite National Park, I went to El Capitan, and it was totally socked in by fog. You could not even see this huge monolith that staggers the imagination coming off the valley floor. It was obscured by a really low, dense fog. You looked up 3,000 feet and every once in a while, the head of El Capitan would poke out of the clouds.
In both of these cases, you don’t see the full picture. That is the way life is. So many times, whether you are in prosperity or agony, you don’t get the full picture. You don’t have context. That is basically a synopsis of Job’s story. If you just look at your prosperity or trials of today, you have only a finite view of an infinite God. That is because people who focus on the short term never see God clearly.
It is interesting to see this borne out by three different perspectives, all of which are finite. First is the devil. The devil was literally standing in some physical way before the living God. In Job 1:11 he says to God, “But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he [Job] hath, and he will curse thee unto thy face.” The devil assumed that God is like he is; the devil buys people off. As my friend Jim Cook says, “The devil will give you what you want, but it will cost you what you have.” The devil loves the short term because that is all that he has. The devil will give you everything you think you want today, but it will cost you tomorrow. The devil has a very poor perspective of the long haul.
Next, you have Zophar, one of Job’s friends, and he is more virtuous than the devil. In Job 20:11 he talks of the wicked people, and he assumes Job is one of them. He says, “His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.” That is a text worth preaching! Our bones are full of the sins of our youth, and we will be buried with such sins. There is no doubt that sin has a cost, but how are you editing the picture? Are you looking at the picture in the full broad, panoramic scope, or are you just seeing the edited version where the past and future are edited out and all you see is right here right now?
You may see a video of someone yelling and screaming, but it has been edited. You don’t know they are yelling at a snake that is coming their way or a bumblebee that is buzzing their hair. Zophar had a larger context, but he was still missing it. He was judging Job based on the fact that God judges sin, and since Job was being judged, he must be sinful.
Lastly, you have Job. In Job 21, Job says something that is an interesting connection to what the devil had said. Zophar said that the wicked will be punished. Job said, “Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?” Don’t you look around and see wicked people prospering? That is what Job saw. Job continued, “Therefore they [the wicked] say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?” The devil said, “If Job is good, it is because you are being good to him.” Job on the other hand says, “There are a lot of people who have had good in their lives, but disregard God because they don’t think they need Him.” In other words, God is a just a matter of profit to them.
Are you thinking about what is right or what is profitable? What is the governing ethic of the decisions you make? The answer is going to be in some measure dependent upon how you edit the picture of your life and of God. Wicked people who prosper edit out God because they think they don’t need Him. They are doing what is profitable, not what is right, and even the profit is only in the short term.
Zophar had said that wicked people are buried with those sins in their bones. Job says both the virtuous and wicked “shall lie down alike in the dust.” Then Job says in verse 30, “That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction.” Job sometimes had these outbursts of inspiration; things we wonder how he could possibly know except God had given them to him. Job goes on to say about those who were buried, “Every man shall draw after him.” In other words, “As I go into the ground in death every man will follow me as there are innumerable before me.” No one lives forever. They were either already in the ground or would follow Job into the ground.
He closes by saying, “How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answer remaineth falsehood?” So, the devil buys people. Zophar judged people. Job observed people, and has an inspired utterance when he says, “Look, there is a day beyond right now.” The bottom line is that people who focus on the short term never see God clearly. God is bigger than the day and bigger than your life and your perspective. Don’t cut God out of your perspective whether it is prosperity or hardship because people who focus on the short term never see God clearly.